Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words. Five minutes is edited by Susanna Baird, with editorial support from managing editor Maria s. picone, newsletter editor kate meen, and founding reader bobbi lerman, plus our rotating team of guest readers, who you can meet in the latest newsletteR. Five Minutes was founded in October 2020, with the Salem (Mass.)-based writing group Carrot Cake Writers supplying the journal’s first pieces. We’d love to read your five. Submit here

Tiny Human

A tiny human just tried to shove me down the basement stairs. And giggled about it. I'm not laughing. I'm trying to remember it's wrong to scream at small children … well, other people's children. Mine deserved it and emerged relatively normal. I'm a nanny, but Mary Poppins I’m not; I have brass knuckles in my tapestry bag, and I will knock your ass out with my big umbrella. The tiny human finds himself on the Time-Out Step. I take a deep breath, choose my words carefully, and deliver them in the quiet voice of seriousness, changing giggling to tears.

Elizabeth Fenley taught English for fifteen years. She currently works as a nanny and lives in a joyfully Empty Nest with six delightfully boisterous dogs.

Chapel Pond Slab

Bittersweet